


A Wandering We Will Go

by cynassa



Category: The Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:17:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: The world isn't always kind, but it has its moments.





	A Wandering We Will Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malachibi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malachibi/gifts).



He had come to meet them, as they had planned, but yet he hadn't been expecting her, his attention elsewhere on a cunningly carved small wooden flute, a child’s toy but able to play merry tunes. A little crowd had gathered around him, but it bothered him less than it had used to, a century or so before. Even Dagner had grown used to it, eventually.

“Moril!” He turned around, already knowing who he would see and yet struck speechless. The fair, bushy hair was twisted up to a neat little knot, and the serious eyes were now covered by glasses. _I’m so glad to see you,_ the thought came to him dreamily, and then he thought, surprised, _Oh, I’m happy to see her_.

“Maewen,” he said, stumbling on it. He and Mitt had spoken of her often in the past few years, but they hadn’t taken her name, in some odd mutual superstition.

 She was in front of him now, but she looked awkward as well. “You look good, I’m so, I’m so glad,” she raised her hand and patted her knot in an absent gesture. Her sincerity shone through as it always had, and his lips spread into a smile by themselves.

“Would you like to hear something?”

She nodded, and set her head to the side in a bird-like gesture, intense. “If you’d like to play,” she said, meaning it entirely.

“I would,” he said and set the toy to his lips again to play a tune Dagner had given him as a gift, near the very end, when they had known, both of them, that each time Moril left may be the last time they met.

\----

150 years ago

The cwidder dragged on his shoulder now. It had become a heavier burden over the years. He still looked as he had when he had first touched it, and he was resigned to it now. He strummed it idly, he was rarely hungry these days but he had learned to recognise the hollow feeling that told him he must eat if he didn’t want to collapse to a faint.

“It is you!” Mitt turned up in front of him like a mirage. “Close your mouth,” he demands, and then steps forward as if to… Moril hunches over but returns the embrace reluctantly. Then his hands tighten against his will. It has been years, or decades, since he had seen a familiar face.

His cwidder strummed a low cry and he pushed Mitt away. Lately, the lightest touch put the cwidder to singing and it did unexpected things. He was growing tired of answering its call. Still, when Mitt asked him to come with him, travel to the places of danger he had sworn to get rid of where he wouldn’t be able to resist using the cwidder, he agreed at once.

They travelled on a cart, and Moril painted up his sign on the side of it, and they passed many long years which were still shorter than the ones he had passed alone, hurt from a wound that did not heal and receded only for short hours at a time.

\----

_100 years ago_

“Did you swear an oath?”

Moril shook his head and then changed his mind, and nodded but then shrugged. His promises were made to people long-dead, and they were fulfilled as far as he could. He had not promised, like Mitt, to rid the world of all evil. He had his own ideas of what such a promise would entail, but he kept them to himself. As long as Mitt would travel, he would travel with Mitt, and the cwidder would go with him, no matter how heavy it got, because without it he was so much dust.

When Mitt started poking him about it again, it was only a surprise that he had kept quiet a whole week.

“I don’t have the One’s blessing,” he finally snapped, half-tempted to try the cwidder out against Mitt. At this rate, even drowning might be better. The way Mitt looked at him, Moril had the sudden thought that he had already considered this. It was easy now, to feel like two lads just making their way in the world in no particular direction, but it was stupid of him to forget who Mitt was. He had brought a Golden Age about by the skin of his teeth and by some frequent fast thinking, and he hadn’t forgotten anything he learnt. Still, Moril shook his head at the casual, _you might be surprised._

Two evenings later, Moril glared at him across the fire, wondering whether the damned fool was deliberately sabotaging him. Mitt bared his teeth in response, and then grinned when Moril rolled his eyes. They had survived the adventure of the day before only by sheer luck and by stubbornness. The cwidder had refused to play at all. He couldn’t rely on it at all anymore.

 _It knows_ , he thought, _it knows I don’t want to share my dreams with it anymore_. And still, now that he had found something, someone, to share his odd unending life with, he was reluctant to leave it behind. Fifty years felt too little. And he hadn’t even seen Nor… Maewen again.

 ----

_94 years ago_

Moril had chewed his lips and could taste blood now. “What if I just, become dust?”

Mitt looked like he was carved out of stone, even his fiddly fingers were still on the pipe that he had picked up smoking a year or so back.

 _You can’t carry it much longer,_ he had said, squinting into the distance, they were both on the cart, and the little ponies were moving at a slow amble. Moril had flinched at the calmness, and gotten angry, but the cwidder weighed as if it were made of stone, and the strings wouldn’t play no matter what he tried.

It occurred to Moril now that Mitt had been alone for a long time too, before they met again. He hugged Mitt with one arm before he went into the the tomb that was supposed to be Mitt’s. _Morbid_ , he had said when Mitt came up with the plan, and Mitt had just shrugged. It was a safe place to leave the thing of power. And if he died, at least it would be in a tomb. Convenient.

He put down the cwidder carefully on the floor and waited a moment. He wasn’t dust at least. He climbed up and out and fell into Mitt’s arms. They stood hugging for long enough that the patrol was coming around the corner when they got around to making a run for it.

\----

_3 years ago_

When Mitt had gotten off the cart, and gathered the satchel and large bag that held all he owned, Moril took a deep breath and said, “I can’t come with you.”

Mitt’s eyes widened and then he frowned deeply. The look was forbidding. “You were waiting until we reached.” The pull taking them (Mitt) to her was too strong to be refused now, they had been circling in for years to the city where Mitt had glimpsed her, two centuries after they had last seen her but maybe only days after she had last seen them.

Moril blinked sleepy eyes at him. “I’ll meet you both later.”

Mitt would not be satisfied so in the end he promised to come in three years time to the Annual Fair. That would have to be enough time for him to put his longings past him, and be happy to be with them. He had three years to learn to be alone again, and to learn to be alone while with them, when after the day had passed, the memory of companionship would have to keep him in the night when they stole away into their own haven with each other.

\----

_Now_

Mitt appeared, slipping between people who moved to make space for him without quite seeming to notice he was there. It was a skill that Moril hadn’t picked up yet. He handed Moril a slice of bread topped with cheese and smelling of spices, and a bite taken out of it and Maewen a whole slice. Moril frowned at him but it had no more effect than it had had the last fifty times.

He beamed at both of them. “Shall we go?” he bowed in a courtly manner, more natural now than the gesture had ever been at court.

Moril was chewing so he shrugged and nodded his head, and Maewen gave them both a fond look. It tugged at his heart.

“Wait!” Maewen stopped them. “Have you paid?”

Mitt’s sheepish smile was mirrored on his own face, he knew. Payment was a thought they had abandoned… well, he had never gotten used to doing it in the first place, offering music for goods for long years. And Mitt, of course, had had a Steward to do the actual payment part.

She paid, they had no coin. And then they ducked out of the crowd and started walking down the King’s Road. Maewen took his hand without hesitation, and Mitt put an arm around him. He stood still, shocked. Maewen smiled, but it held a shadow, and when he turned to Mitt, he realised that he had been missed, more than he thought. Her hand had loosened in his, so he grasped it tighter and smiled back. The details could come later.

He was content to let Maewen lead, Mitt laughing at his side, voice loud enough to reach them both without effort.


End file.
